AP: ATF says it has disrupted skinhead plot to assassinate Obama, kill 102 black people.
Late Update: Subsequent reporting on this story suggests that the part of this plot that involved killing Obama was much more aspirational than anything they’d worked out a clear plan to accomplish. But they had worked out a plan to raid a predominantly African-American high school and kill 100 kids.
Biden actually holds up pretty well in front of what has to be the most nutball interviewer of the 2008 cycle, an anchor from a local ABC affiliate in Florida …
(Biden’s remark at 1:05 is one of many reasons I really like the guy … to understand the answer you’ve got to see the question which starts about 43 seconds in.)
The award for hardest tire swinging ever goes to the LA Times‘ Maeve Reston, who today dreamily relives her time on the Straight Talk Express as if she were Streisand to McCain’s Redford.
I hate to excerpt any of it because you really should read the whole thing, but it’s just too perfect. Reston, on the way they were:
By July, I had covered McCain for almost seven months. I could recite many lines of his stump speech by heart, dreamed about his events at night and spent so much time scrolling through campaign e-mails on my BlackBerry that my fiance joked to our friends about the other man in my life.
Over those months, McCain had artfully created a sense of intimacy with the reporters who traveled with him. He barbecued for us at his Arizona cabin, and opened up about matters as personal as his faith and his son’s girlfriends. On one of my first days covering McCain, another reporter protectively warned me that it was important to be judicious with the material I used from McCain’s bus rides to keep the conversations in context. …
Later that summer, the frequency of McCain’s news conferences dwindled to late-afternoon, end-of-the-week affairs where he began calling more often on reporters he didn’t know.
We now watched from afar at most events — listening for the few sentences that would change each day in his stump speech. We would catch glimpses of him through the window of his SUV from five cars back in the motorcade or watch him get off the plane.
At the height of vice presidential speculation, we rushed the staff cabin of the plane, frustrated that no one was around to address the rumors.
“What do you want, you little jerks?” McCain said, using his former term of affection, before turning away.
On a recent Sunday during a brief stop at a Virginia phone bank, I got unusually close to McCain in the line of people waiting to shake his hand.
Tape recorder out and within a foot of him, I asked if he could talk about his new economic plan, which he was to unveil that week. The man who once asked me about my wedding date returned my gaze with a stare, shook the hand of the strangers to the right and left of me and continued out the door.
Hankie anyone?
Interesting numbers in a SurveyUSA poll of Ohio: 22% of the likely electorate has already voted, favoring Obama by a 56%-39% margin, and the two candidates are tied among the remaining 78%. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
John McCain continues to pretend that he’s opposed to a graduated income tax.
Those of you who are following this election closely know that in many states people have already started voting. But even as someone who’s supposed to be in the know about this sort of stuff, I was surprised when I saw just how many votes have already been cast in a number of key states.
One other point to remember is that the national percentage of early voters can be deceiving. Many states don’t allow early voting at all, and only have very limited opportunities for absentee voting. So the percentages in states that do have early voting can dwarf the national average — and those states tend to be key swing states.
So with all that prologue I want to tell you about a site run by Prof. Michael McDonald of George Mason University that is compiling on-going statistics for early voting in states across the country. You can visit the site here. But here are a few nuggets.
If we take the 2004 vote total as the baseline, 31.8% of voters in Georgia have already cast their ballots; in Colorado, 37.9% have already voted; in Florida, 27% have already voted; in Nevada, 39.8% have already voted.
Now, remember, most people assume turnout will be higher in 2008 than 2004. So these percentages will probably be at least a bit lower when run against the 2008 totals. But these numbers still make clear that a week in advance of election day, in several of the key states we’re all watching, probably a solid third of the voting has already taken place.
Years after the Keating Five scandal, McCain went back for another taste.